Gregory

02-29-2012. This is my friend Gregory. Gregory has great eyes. Very pretty. I was working on this one trying to figure out stubble. He has a very short haircut, and very short beard and mustache. :)

giving a hand

02-28-2012 Today felt like a "draw my hand" kinda day. So I did. Using a loose grip and my pointy brush marker. :)

Strange

02-27-2012. I have to stop trying to sketch people that I don't know. I derive no pleasure out of it, since I have never talked to them at all and have absolutely no feeling on them. So all I can do is look at a photo and draw some lines. While they may be somewhat close, they just don't connect for me. Or maybe I should keep practicing. But....meh.

:)

Back again....

02-26-2012. From a distance I couldn't get deep into detail. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing... :)

At The Coffee Shop...again...

02-25-2012... This guy with his little kid hat sipping coffee out of a big mug was sitting with his girlfriend/female counterpart/et cetera. The not-so-odd thing about it (nowadays, anyway) is they never said one word to each other the entire time I was there. Just sat across from each other messing with their phones. Maybe they were playing Words With Friends with each other. Anyhoo, I definitely feel more at ease sitting there sketching live...

Crap.

02-24-2012. See? A year and two months daily practice and I can STILL produce utter crap. There's not much redeeming about this one...the only thing I'm actually liking is the necklace. Trying to cut out a lot of extra lines and keeping it simple pretty much threw my brain for a tizzy even more than it was already in. I usually get into sketching and lose track of time, but it was a no go this time. Stubble gets me every. Time. And the chunka hair threw me too. Even Miss Cindy puppy said it wasn't worth anything but a good chew. Ah well... good practice. It taught me what NOT to do. And I did promise to post the good and the bad...

Mom, part (anyway)

02-23-2012. My mom has a very symmetrical nose. Which looks nothing like mine. :-O Almost nothing...

At the meeting...

02-22-2012. Today I went to the 'burbs for a meeting with some of my coworkers. I took along my sketchbook and took notes and sketched, because frankly, I have a better attention/retention when I have my hands busy sketching. I had, though, just a regular pencil. No eraser or ink. So these are sketches of some of the people around me in a raw, unfinished format. :)

Pup

02-21-2012. I didn't have anything in mind tonight to sketch... and there she was... snoozing away. Perfect for practice. :)

stretching it...

02-20-2012... Sketching in front of the mirror again, I thought a regular face would be boring, so I smooshed up a bit.  Fun, but hard to keep it going... so I had to sketch fast. :-D

Amber Love...

02-19-2012. Today was about practicing some more, getting over my problems with putting two people in a close space and having them look connected...not separate entities. I think I didn't do so bad here. They look like they're in the same frame, and not stiff and separate and oddly sized. :)

An inch worth of space...

02-18-2012. So today I decided to wander to the coffee shop for lunch before I headed off to shop for some necessities. Instead of packing my larger sketchbook and taking it along, I traveled light. In case I saw anything I tucked this tiny 3x3 inch sketchbook into my camera bag (yes, the camera DOES go everywhere with me...don't judge me...) anyhoo, waiting for my turkey wrap, I pulled it out, along with my skinny markerpen, and sketched this lady, who was slouched in her chair reading her phone. Not a big, spectacular type sketch...but sometimes the little ones make you feel just as good....

Eye

02-17-2012. My eye. And half a nose...and earrings...and oh, a piece of mouth.... yup...more fun with lines practice.  :)

More Wyatt....

02-16-2012... Wyatt was reaching into a water pool for something. I really liked the way the photo looked, (I didn't take the photo) the posture of him reaching... and wanted to try for a smaller face, once again, younger, with some more of the body in the scene.... :)

Chloe and her wings...

02-15-2012. Little Chloe has wings. Little Chloe's wings are cute. SHE'S cute. Not that I felt she was a failure in ANY sense of the word the last time I sketched her, but I wanted to give a try with a smaller area for her face, and expand some to show her lovely wings. Not too bad. With the thickness of the pen, a quick push and slight nudge and suddenly there's the nose. The mouth. :)

Candy take two...

02-14-2012. I'm thinking take two is about 100 times better than the first. Unfortunately this one didn't have little Ender, which shrinks it back to about 50 times better, but I'll practice more on her... her mom takes excellent photos of her. :) But anyhoo, leaving the dark out of it, and adding in the thick pen made me much happier.  :)

A Crooked Pinkie...

02-13-2012. Or to be more precise, MY crooked pinkie finger. Both pinkies have been crooked since birth. Which makes it really rather easy to double cross my fingers, if anyone needs extra luck. :)  So far I'm really enjoying this... instead of sketching a whole face or body, choosing a part of the anatomy and drawing it out, from life, with the heavier lines, AND making it more than just a practice sketch, but practicing also the placement of the subject matter to keep the actual artwork pleasing to the eye (okay, MY eye, anyway...) ;-)

Toes and Nose

 02-12-2012... a few live sketches today. These are my Fred Flintstone toes... I went for a non-facial groove again, and find feet most interesting... this was, of course, after I sketched B... who decided to deposit himself on my lap while I sat in front of the mirror in my comfy little chair. He plopped right down across my right hand and decided a scratch under the chin was in order, so as I petted him I sketched with my lefty and the pad on the arm of the chair. I caught him pre-yawn. I love his pre-yawns, because his nose and lip area gets distorted and pointy and his eyes start to slit... :) Ah well, it was a good practice on fur....

Pieces and whole, life and photo...

 02-11-2012... And yet another live sketch of a piece of my face. I rather like the jaggedy,sort of splotchy linework... I have no idea why it appeals to me more than the smoother lines, it just does.

And while I was at it, I practiced on Lisa again. I think this time I've gotten more past the bumps that I was having trouble with and more towards her. Getting rid of the extraneous lines boiled it down to an almost cartoonlike state. But I like. I moved with a bit more speed on this one with the lines, so the jagged look isn't there... or maybe I was TOO conscious of trying to make it look like her (subconsciously, if that makes sense) and so focused on the parts making the whole... hm.

Nose....

02-10-2012... For today's subject... I picked my nose. (GROAN) A bit more tentative, I suspect that the reason was that there is an absolute shadow in the nostrils, and how to show that without it becoming a giant black spot in the center of the page... I didn't want to overdo. So I held onto it, and didn't let go....

Ear....

02-09-2012. And hair. Working once again, sketching in front of the mirror, I bought a couple Tombo pens and used the thick brush pen for this one. It was a lovely feel, and I quite like the line quality it gave me... :)

hand

02-08-2012. Working on line weight again, I did a quick sketch of my right hand and pulled out the markers. I like this one, I think... :-)

Eyeball

02-07-2012. After tossing around some ideas with Stephanie and Hans, another couple of  friends from WAN with great ideas, I decided to try to split out for a bit... continue sketching full faces to keep in practice, but also separate out body parts so that I'm not so much focused on the position, but on the lines... simplifying, blocking hair out into big blocks... letting the line talk for me. I've always loved a nice vibrant line.

So today I took a pencil, sketched out my basic eyeball, and used that brush marker from yesterday to play with the lines. It's a bit odd and uncomfortable, holding the pen. I'm switching around trying to get the best change of line with the most stable hold. Of course this time I was slouched sideways in the chair with my legs folded. I should probably sit up right... ;-)

Mirror Image

02-06-2012. I was having this discussion with some fellow artists about my sketches. They agreed with me that they've been helping me get my features in the correct place, but I've been feeling a bit of discontent... not that I've done anything WRONG, per se... it's just that in my sketches I've become a bit static, and this is an ongoing exploration. They helped me voice this and tossed out a couple of ideas. This is why I love the art groups that I hang in. It's a never ending supply of wisdom.

So today I dug through my art supplies, and came up with some Prang Brush Pens that HAVE to be 30 years old, but still working (well, MOST of them are in working condition...hurrah!). I wandered over to my comfy chair, pulled the mirror around, and sketched myself. Not as loose as my cohorts were probably wanting me to go for, but definitely looser than I've been doing. I used the side of it, and held it loosely, creating a wider variance in the line thickness. I pretty much loved the color difference, too. So far so happy. :)

Thanks, guys!

Rena and her daughter

02-05-2012. This one was a bit difficult, but also a good practice because I don't know Rena or her Daughter. I had a pretty good photo of Rena, but the photo of her daughter was pretty small and somewhat fuzzy. Not that it was perfect, but I think that all this practice with faces helped me get her features correct (as opposed to me trying to guess at them without any practice.

Not your usual stuff...

02-04-2012. No sketchy-sketch of anyone today. A few days ago I tossed out a challenge to some of my friends to incorporate squares, circles, and triangles along with rectangles and ovals into a drawing. Today I started out with grand plans of making sketches of these and using lines to make a more intricate design. As I started, though, I switched mid plan and used this as an exercise in the way I held my pen to use the sides to create thicker lines. I'm still trying to find a comfortable way to do it AND maintain some semblance of control over how the lines go down on the paper. And a bit to create an interesting space/negative space. That's it. Nothing any deeper. :-)

Mom, part 2... more live sketching...

02-03-2012. The problem with people knowing that you're sketching them is that sometimes they become self conscious. Take my mom, for example, who is up to visit me. She was doing fine, coloring in her coloring book with two different head poses. Up to look at the TV, down and tipped a bit to the left to color Winnie the Pooh. Then I happened to mention something, because she looked like she had stopped coloring (when in all actuality she was just getting out a bigger box of crayons). I told her to ignore me, and just keep coloring, but instead of being relaxed, her lips became tense, she kept wobbling all over the place, and it made it quite a bit harder to sketch. "But I don't remember how I was sitting!" "Just color. You were doing it naturally."  We managed to muddle through, and I'd have to say STILL not half bad for a live sketch. :-)

Sven

02-02-2012. This is Sven. side from Sven's cool pose and badass look (and it had nothing to do with screwing up the hair yesterday) ;-) The thing I liked was the mirrored sunglasses catching the reflections, which I decided to turn into blocks... mini-abstracts. Fun fun!

Candy and Ender

02-01-2012. This is Candy. She has lovely deep red hair, and wears a lot of black (so do I...) I think I started this out right, but then tried to play up the darkness and wound up doing too much. Or not enough. To her hair. I'll have to think on this one... perhaps a wider marker pen to add in some different thicknesses, areas, etc. Ender I think I did pretty good on. I resisted the need to shade in, which is always my downfall...